Is there no limit to how low CNN will sink? CNN's Don Lemon hosted a panel Thursday night featuring leftist turncoat Peter Beinart and "conservative" commentator Ben Ferguson, to discuss incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton's supposed "anti-Muslim ties." Beinart was on the warpath, attempting to smear Bolton by association with me, because he wrote the foreword to my 2010 book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America, (written with Robert Spencer) and spoke at several of my rallies.

Beinart couldn't tell the truth, which is that in The Post-American Presidency I accurately exposed Obama's hatred for Israel, post-American internationalism, opposition to the freedom of speech, and much more -- long before they became obvious to the world. So instead, Beinart, calling me "the most notorious anti-Muslim bigot," lied repeatedly, claiming that in the book I said that Barack Obama was trying to impose Sharia law in the United States, and that Obama was a Muslim.

Neither of those claims is true. I wrote, accurately, that Obama was enabling the spread of Sharia in the U.S. by strong-arming communities into accepting mega-mosques in residential areas and using his Justice Department to fight for special privileges in workplaces and schools. He blamed the First Amendment for what he knew to be an al-Qaeda attack on our consulate in Benghazi, by falsely claiming it was a reaction to a YouTube video criticizing Muhammad. And his FBI had an undercover agent at the free speech event my organization organized in Garland, Texas in 2015, but no team there to stop the jihadis from attacking. (It was local police who stopped a potential massacre.) 

In the book, I also detailed the fact that his father and stepfather were both Muslims (and in Islamic law, if your father is Muslim, you are, too), and that he clearly has an affinity for the Islamic faith. But that was all. Beinart had to distort and exaggerate what I said beyond recognition -- all in his desperation to smear Bolton by association with me.

Did anyone on that panel actually read my book? Almost certainly not. After Beinart lied brazenly about what the book said, the "conservative" panelist Ben Ferguson said that he would not have advised Bolton to write the foreword. Why not? Why is Ferguson sanctioning and validating the smear job of the kind that the left has carried out on every effective voice for freedom and individual rights this country? That book was prescient. I was right about everything I wrote -- the book was an unheeded warning.

Ferguson should have done his homework and have been ready to tell Beinart and the CNN audience what my book actually said, and how leftist smear organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have for years been spreading the lies that Beinart repeated Thursday night. Ferguson could have mentioned how the SPLC is trying to destroy legitimate conservative organizations by lumping them in with the KKK and neo-Nazis as "hate groups," and that it refuses to classify the violent leftists of Antifa as a "hate group." But don't expect a CNN house conservative to know how to fight back hard with the truth in the face of the endless barrage of lies.

The last panelist, Keith Boykin, was even worse, asking why we should highlight Muslim extremism, and why should we even talk about it, since "we have horrible relations with Muslim countries."

The CNN segment bordered on the comical when Beinart, with his record of anti-Israel polemic, said, "I'm saying this as a Jew" -- and of course this, too, went unchallenged.

Beinart called my rallies against the Ground Zero Mosque -- a project which 70% of Americans opposed -- an "anti-mosque rally," and acted as if they were some egregious offense. Another lie from Beinart was that I posted vile videos of Muslims having sex with animals. I never posted any such videos. And he also claimed that I "repeatedly called Muslims savages." This was another outright lie. Most likely this smear merchant was referring to an ad that my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, won free speech court battles several years ago to display in the New York subway system and on buses in New York City and elsewhere. The ad read: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad."

The savages referred to in the ad, as I explained repeatedly when the ad first appeared, are clearly the Palestinian jihadis who murder Israelis on buses and in restaurants, and while enjoying a Shabbat dinner in their homes -- and the other Palestinians in Gaza who pass out candies to celebrate these slaughters. If someone thinks that I was referring to all Muslims, they must think that all Muslims support this savage behavior -- in which case, it is they who are "Islamophobic," not I.

Beinart likened me to KKK leader David Duke, saying I was the "equivalent of David Duke for Muslims." Why is that? Why wouldn't the equivalent of David Duke for Muslims be Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Why are those who shine a light on Islamic texts and teachings that incite Muslim to wage jihad the enemy? We work with Muslims who wish to live free -- how is that like David Duke?

Of course, CNN would never have dreamed of actually having me on to defend myself against these charges.

I demand a retraction. Don Lemon allowed a libelist to defame me repeatedly on his show. Has CNN departed so completely from any sense of fairness and accuracy that they not only air these libels without any effective opposition, but will allow them to stand unchallenged? President Trump was absolutely right when he labeled CNN "fake news," and their lying about me and the positions I have taken in order to smear John Bolton is just the latest example among many of CNN's cavalier attitudes toward the truth and eagerness to disseminate the wildest falsehoods in pursuit of its leftist agenda.

At this point, CNN has about as much credibility as Weekly World News, the supermarket tabloid that claims, among other things, that numerous Congressmen and Senators are space aliens.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.